1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to processing and/or being responsive to interactions with and/or between at least one quantum state-entity, and more specifically to utilizing quantum attributes of at least one quantum state-entity to potentially realizing interference related phenomena, or a congener thereof, with these interactions as well as prospectively further utilizing these interactions for various forms of processing, including information processing and other purposes.
2. Related Art
Of the potential utilizations for quantum technology currently being developed, information processing has become among the more prominent. Due to the impetus provided by the substantial benefits that appear to be realizable and the concomitant need to confront and surmount many of the present difficulties in performing quantum procedures, research in quantum information processing has become a crucible for forging advances in quantum technology. Accordingly, in many instances, a description of manners of interacting with and/or manipulating quantum state-entities can be equivalent to a description of the crux of quantum state-entities' utilizations for quantum information processing, and vice versa. The employment of these quantum technologies is also applicable to a wide gamut of other uses as well, of course, and a description that is ostensibly focused on the development of a particular technique for information processing is regularly widely applicable to other situations also.
Among the foremost of the varying actual (as opposed to theoretical) manners of effecting a particular quantum process are utilizations of quantum optics. Because the benefits of quantum optics are diverse and well known, its use is often central to discussions of quantum developments, whether in the realm of fundamental advances in knowledge or in the realm of practical applications. This broad utility of quantum optics has driven a substantial portion of the ongoing efforts to commercially develop quantum technologies as evinced, for example, by the magnitude of patent applications that deploy quantum optics to perform their central functions. Many of both the basic and more advanced aspects of quantum optics, including manners of manipulating photons with quantum optics, are well known to those of skill in the art, and many explicatory resource are available on the world-wide-web (www) that provide anyone with ready access to wide ranging and detailed reference resources on various quantum technologies. These include, but are not limited to:                Quantiki—a wild accessible on the www at the url:                    http://www.quantiki.org/wiki/index.php/Category:Introductory_Tutorials                        which includes a number of expositions such as What is Quantum Computation?, and Introduction to Quantum Theory (a very basic introduction to key concepts in quantum theory from a historical perspective.)        Optics Express—A leading journal in optics research, accessible at the url:                    http://www.opticsinfobase.org/oe/Issue.cfm                        Encyclopedia of Laser Physics and Technology, which substantial overlaps with much of, and specifically refers to portions of itself as being focused on, quantum optics, accessible at the url:                    http://www.rp-photonics.com/encyclopedia.html                        Qwiki—a quantum physics wild devoted to providing technical resources for practicing quantum physicists. (synopsis from Wikipedia)As well as great multitudes of other www sites (particularly those of university research divisions, and including, of course, many journals in the realms of optics, quantum technologies, photonics, and the like, both print and electronic, as well as those with free and paid access policies) devoted to detailing and often teaching considerable breadths of quantum optics research and background (an example of just one web portal that attempts to provide a panoply of such links is titled “Quantum Optics and Atom Optics links” accessible at the url: http://www.quantumoptics.net/). The scope of information available and/or known by those of ordinary skill in the art of quantum information processing, quantum optics, and the like therefore encompasses the gamut of abundant operational techniques, multitudes of theoretical developments, and numerous diverse manners of quantum technology employment.        
Among the more frequently pursued approaches to utilizing quantum technologies for information processing are utilizations of quantum entities in superpositions of quantum states to embody and manipulate various representations of information in manners which are either unavailable with the present conventional integrated circuits, impractically slow to process when utilizing entities (electrons) that are solely employed to represent binary states (unlike superpositions of quantum states that can theoretically embody unlimited gradations of partial combinations of states), and/or are unable to process a data representation unless the information that is being represented is already known well enough to construct the representation (unlike a quantum superposition of states that theoretically can accurately represent information even when that information is not explicitly known in an independent exact manner) A second broadly pursued branch of approaches to utilizing quantum technologies for information processing involve the utilization of photons and the quantum properties of their interactions to develop a photonic substitute for electrons' role in integrated circuits (to benefit from various photon properties that avoid issues arising with electrons, such as power consumption, heat production, scale limitations due to quantum effects when integrated circuit elements approach the nanoscale, in addition to expectations of improved processing speed and new capabilities promised by quantum photonic information processing.) The potential benefits of these quantum technologies has not yet been fully realized, nor fully commercialized successfully, though, and hence there remains a need for further advances, including realizations with specific capabilities, in the field.